by Wole Akande

Dissident Voice
January 2, 2003

The failure of
the latest round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO)
headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to come to an international agreement to
allow poor countries to buy cheap drugs, guarantees that 2003 will be another
miserable year for millions of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis patients in
poor countries in Africa and elsewhere. According to the BBC, although 143
countries agreed to the deal, the United States blocked the international
agreement because, according to U.S. negotiators, the deal would allow too many
drug patents to be ignored.

For many, the
realization that the absence of an international agreement on patent-free drugs
is contributing to the deaths of millions of people around the world is infinitely
sad and depressing. Of course, the issue of patent-protected drugs is not new,
for as long as we can remember, multinational pharmaceutical companies -- often
backed by their mother Western governments -- have defended the patent system
because it allows them to protect their products and recover the high costs of
developing new drugs.

The companies
argue that patents are their lifeblood -- unless they have the monopoly right
to market their inventions for a fixed period, there is no point investing huge
amounts in researching and developing new remedies. The actual costs of
manufacturing most drugs aren't huge -- without patents, competitors could rip
off their inventions and they would never recoup their investment.

As a result of
this argument, regularly reinforced through arm-twisting on the donor front,
poor countries like Nigeria have been compelled to rely on patented (branded)
medicines manufactured by Western pharmaceuticals, even when cheaper
alternatives exist in India, Brazil and other countries.

A report by a
Norwegian pharmacist commissioned by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said that
some patented (branded) drugs are even priced higher in African countries than
in the Nordic countries, which have substantially higher resources for their
health systems.

Until the
creation of the WTO in 1995, few poor countries had intellectual property laws,
and countries like Egypt, Thailand and India developed thriving generic drug
industries. Competition from generic manufacturers like India's Cipla does not
appear to have threatened the industry -- pharmaceuticals is one of the
industrialized world's most profitable business sectors.

Under the new
WTO rules, however, strict American intellectual property rights regulations,
which extend patent rights for 20 years, have become standard. All 140 WTO
member countries must change their laws to conform, although some developing
countries have been given until 2006 to make the change. For many, it is
difficult to see the economic rationale behind the 20-year monopoly. Not
surprisingly, it was chosen because the American pharmaceuticals industry was
extremely influential in drawing up the WTO's patent provisions.

In practical
terms, this enforced adherence to patents has meant that poor countries like
Nigeria end up buying lesser quantities of the branded medicines with their
limited resources, meaning that fewer of their people have access to reasonable
health care.

Nothing
illustrates the absurdity of this state of affairs, the inherent inhumanity and
the immorality of the "profit-before-life" policies of Western
pharmaceutical companies, than AIDS.

More than 10
years after the first definitive HIV treatment, AZT, was developed, less than
0.5 per cent of infected people in poor countries have access to
antiretrovirals -- AIDS drugs -- which could prolong their lives and which has
drastically minimized the onslaught of the pandemic in the West. Only 10,000 of
the estimated 25 million people in Africa infected with HIV/AIDS take
antiretroviral drugs, which can cost $10,000 to $15,000 a year per person in
developed countries.

Such low
antiretroviral access statistics have meant that in many developing countries,
to be diagnosed with HIV is to be handed a virtual death sentence. In addition,
the socio-economic effects of the pandemic on a developing community
environment have been horrendous.

They range from
an almost unbearable burden of orphaned children through degradation of the
human resources necessary for national development to increased crime and
destitution.

On the other
hand, Brazil is seen as a model for other countries of what can be achieved for
public health by boosting local production of drugs such as the anti-AIDS drug,
AZT, lowering prices through competition and negotiating discounts on patented
drugs. Between 1996 and 2001, approximately 358,000 AIDS hospitalizations were
prevented, saving approximately $1.1 billion.

Malaria is
killing thousands of children in African countries because law-abiding African
member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) can't import the Sh2
generic drug from India.

Of course,
nobody pretends that low-cost drugs are the whole solution. The World Health
Organization estimates that average health spending in Africa is $50 to $60 per
person a year. However, the greater availability of generic versions of vital
drugs for infectious diseases -- whether as a result of voluntary licenses or
weaker patent protection -- would certainly help to improve public health in
poor countries. Currently, in Nigeria, in the absence of viable alternatives,
the poor often unwittingly resort to purchasing substandard or counterfeit
drugs.

Conveniently, it
is often forgotten that Penicillin, the first modern wonder drug, wasn't
patented. When Alexander Fleming invented it at St. Mary's hospital in London
in 1928, the British government decided that something of such great benefit to
the world should not be a monopoly. Unfortunately, we are now in a different
era, when ROI (return on investment) is everything. Consequently, unlike the
British government in the 1920’s, today’s pharmaceutical industry takes a
different view. Protecting its intellectual property rights is a major
priority, even if that means preventing poor countries from making cheap copies
of the drugs that they urgently need.

As long as the
noose around patent-protected drugs is not loosened, Africa faces a
humanitarian disaster. Most of the 33 million diagnosed with HIV worldwide live
in Africa. Sadly, the majority of those people are likely to die in the next
decade without urgent action, according to UNaids, the United Nations agency
devoted to fighting the disease.

Wole Akande, a former opinion columnist
with Ireland's Irish Examiner newspaper, is a freelance journalist based in
Nigeria. Wole maintains Abeokuta Web Pages, a Nigerian community website: http://www.abeokuta.org. He can be reached at: wakande@YellowTimes.org. This article first appeared at Yellow Times.org. Please visit Yellow Times and support
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